Christopher Tilghman Books In Order

Novels

  1. Mason’s Retreat (1995)
  2. Roads of the Heart (2004)
  3. The Right-Hand Shore (2012)
  4. Thomas and Beal in the Midi (2019)

Collections

  1. In a Father’s Place (1990)
  2. The Way People Run (1999)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Christopher Tilghman Books Overview

Mason’s Retreat

This superb novel by the author of In a Father’s Place confirms Tilghman as one of America’s finest writers. Set on the Eastern shore of Maryland, on the eve of World War II, the story concerns the decline of the once grand Mason family. From the Hardcover edition.

Roads of the Heart

With the deep emotion and insight of a true storyteller Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times, Christopher Tilghman, the author of the acclaimed Mason’s Retreat and In a Father s Place, has written a powerful new novel of men and women, fathers and families. Eric Alwin has gone to visit his elderly father, a once commanding and charismatic Maryland senator who has seen his public service soured and his family broken by a sex scandal. Realizing that his own unfaithfulness, his disaffection with his career and marriage, seem to be a continuation of a family pattern, Eric is astonished to find his father proposing a bold expedition. The ensuing trip through the Deep South and the American heartland becomes both a journey into the emotional truth of the Alwin family and a breakthrough into a new kind of resilience and understanding, and love. Along the way, Eric will know anew not only his mother, Audrey, but his sisters, Alice and Poppy, and his own wife and son. As he discovers the surprising secret behind the scandal that defined his father s fate, he will also realize what he must do to shape a more authentic and coherent life for himself. Christopher Tilghman s Roads of the Heart is a brilliant achievement by an author who, grappling with the strains and discords of contemporary American culture, achieves a special understanding of how family members love and lose and find one another every day. From the Hardcover edition.

The Right-Hand Shore

A masterful novel that confronts the dilemmas of race, family, and forbidden love in the wake of America’s Civil WarFifteen years after the publication of his acclaimed novel Mason s Retreat, Christopher Tilghman returns to the Mason family and their Chesapeake Bay estate.’It is 1922, and Edward Mason is making a call upon Miss Mary Bayly, the current owner of the legendary Mason family estate, the Retreat. Miss Mary is dying. She plans to give the Retreat to Edward, the closest direct descendant of the original immigrant that Miss Mary can find. Edward believes he can charm the old lady, secure the estate and be back in Baltimore by lunchtime. Instead, over the course of a long day, he hears the stories that will forever tie him and his family to the land. He hears of Miss Mary s grandfather brutally selling all his slaves in 1857 in order to avoid the reprisals he believes will come with Emancipation. He hears of the doomed efforts by Wyatt Bayly, Miss Mary s father, to turn the Retreat into a vast peach orchard, and of Miss Mary and her brother growing up in a fractured and warring household. He learns of Abel Terrell, son of Free Blacks who becomes head orchardist, and whose family becomes intimately connected to the Baylys and to the Mason legacy. The drama in this richly textured novel proceeds through vivid set pieces: on rural nineteenth century industry; on a boyhood on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; on the unbreakable divisions of race and class; and, finally, on two families attempting to save a son and a daughter from the dangers of their own innocent love.

In a Father’s Place

The short stories of Christopher Tilghman are set against the enroached upon yet still expansive landscapes of our continent. From a Montanan widow who marries her ranch hand to the aging patriarch of an old Maryland family on the Eastern Shore, Tilghman’s characters bring to life the trials and bonds of belonging to one another as lovers, as friends, as fathers. This collection of stories, the author’s first book, is a deeply American work composed with a keen sense of our past and our predicaments but also a celebration of our resiliency. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, John Casey called In a Father’s Place ‘a wonderful surprise…
a beautiful book, making emotions as vivid and rich in perspective as a loved landscape.’

The Way People Run

In The Way People Run, one of America’s finest writers, the author of Mason’s Retreat ‘magnificent’ Publishers Weekly and In a Father’s Place ‘radiant’ The New York Times, gives us a new collection of stunning short stories, brilliant fiction about the deep emotional connections, and disconnections, between people and within people’s inner lives. Against the backdrop of vivid settings, especially the Chesapeake Bay region and the American West, Tilghman writes with passion, generosity, and grace about the ways people con front themselves and the lives they’ve created. In The Way People Run, chosen by Robert Stone for the 1992 Best American Short Stories volume, a man goes west to find a new job and, out of the framework of the familiar, loses his hold on his family and his old life. In Something Important, Peter Ramsey undertakes a reunion with his long lost brother, and discovers that his wife is in love with someone else. In Things Left Undone, chosen by Tobias Wolff to appear in the 1994 Best American Short Stories, a young couple tries to survive a tragedy. As Andre Dubus said about In a Father’s Place, Christopher Tilghman ‘is a spiritual writer who often looks at things the rest of us cannot see.’ Life’s truths are at the heart of these magnificent stories by a modern American master. Praise for Mason’s RetreatMagnificent…
Tilghman’s first novel places him securely in the ranks of our most accomplished writers.’ Publishers WeeklyBeautifully written…
fully imagined…
Few first novels are narrated with the clarity, economy, and masterful assurance Tilghman brings to this re markably moving and persuasive tale.’ Entertainment WeeklyRich with character and sweet with the scent of a Maryland farm in America’s mid century summer…
The moral center of this novel is larger than all its sorrows, which have about them the inevitable arc of a star falling from a darkening sky.’ Gail Caldwell, The Boston Sunday GlobePraise for In a Father’s PlaceA collection that signals the appearance of a gifted new writer.’ Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesA simple, classic feel, as if written from deep in the American grain…
It is a magnificent portrait.’ Matthew Gilbert, The Boston GlobeAbout Mason’s RetreatEchoes of The Great Gatsby, William Styron’s Lie Down in Darkness, O’Neill, and Faulkner…
a stunning individual achievement.’ Kirkus ReviewsMason’s Retreat is a brilliant book full of wisdom and insight into the workings of the soul. The language is perfect. Every paragraph holds a treasure. This is one of the most thoroughly satisfying novels you will ever read.’ Kaye GibbonsPowerful…
a work of surpassing thematic seriousness and fictive artistry. In all respects, Mason’s Retreat is exemplary.’ Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World

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